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I am not all that familiar with the Roger Ebert most Americans know: the guy who hosted At the Movies and judged the merit of films with the direction of his thumbs. By the time I started paying attention to him, his cancer treatment had made it all but impossible for him to host the show. It was through his writing that I became aware of his brilliance.

When I first began to get serious about film around my junior year of high school, I got a Hollywood Video membership card and bookmarked Roger Ebert’s website. Most of my familiarity with film criticism up until then had stemmed from the 2000 VideoHound guide I kept under my bed and consulted religiously for every film that even marginally caught my interest. Once I started reading Ebert, that book started gathering dust.

He was the perfect person to guide a novice through the pleasures of cinema because he never once lost his reverence for the medium. He just loved movies. He knew they were special. He knew how to watch them. He knew how to talk about them. He treated cinema as if it were holy. When he loved a film, he endorsed it with such vigor that it was impossible not to want to see it. When he hated a film, he dismantled it so thoroughly that the dismantling was an act of entertainment in itself. Even if I disagreed with him (which was often), it was difficult to refute his points. I read him so much that he became like a voice inside my head; when I watched movies, I watched them with the ghost of Roger Ebert sitting beside me.

He became like a mentor to me (and, I soon found, others like me), guiding and shaping not only my critical thought process and writing, but my worldviews as well. He was warm, compassionate, intelligent, and witty–all the things I wanted to be. And he had the coolest job in the world.

“A man goes to the movies. A critic must be honest enough to admit he is that man.” Ebert quoted this line from Robert Warshow so often it may as well be attributed to him. He treated it as a mission statement. It was impossible to separate Roger Ebert the man from Roger Ebert the critic because they were one and the same. When he started his wonderful blog a few years ago, it just seemed like a natural extension of his reviews. And that’s why his loss stings so deeply to so many. A voice that, through the years, has become ingrained so deeply in our culture is now silenced.

Werner Herzog said it better than anyone in this blurb for Ebert’s Awake in the Dark: “Roger Ebert has become a member of our households, our families. He is the one who tells us all about the movies. And, as his passion for the cinema is so deep, and his knowledge so profound, he is the one we can always trust.”

Living in the Information Age is both a wonderful and overwhelming thing. On one hand, we have more media and art instantly available to us than any generation before; on the other, it’s hard to know where, in all that cultural vastness, our attentions would be best directed. We always get the feeling that no matter what we’re listening to or how much we’re enjoying it, there’s something even better out there waiting to be discovered. And for those of my generation, on top of all that, we have years and years’ worth of influential and essential listening/viewing/reading behind us to acquaint ourselves with.

In other words, it’s a little tough being a pop music fan these days.

I try to find a healthy balance between the new and acclaimed, the old and heralded, and the obscure pet bands every music fan likes to keep in his back pocket. But I also work a full-time job and enjoy having a social life, so I simply don’t have enough time to hear or consider everything I’d like to. I do have a long commute and spend hours every week listening to music, but I’m a big proponent of absorbing an album before forming a critical thought on it – I’d rather listen to one album seven or eight times and be comfortable in my assessment of it than listen to seven or eight albums once and prematurely write them off or give them undue praise. Music is inherently a form of media that demands this kind of attention.

All of this is a long-winded way for me to say I cannot provide a comprehensive list of the best music of 2012 because I didn’t listen to enough of the year’s music. However, I have made a playlist of 23 of the year’s songs that I really loved. Some come from albums I also loved; others come from albums that fell a little short for me. You can listen to these in this Spotify playlist. I’ve written a little about each song below (in alphabetical order).

Allo Darlin’ – “Capricornia” (from Europe)
Twee music gets a lot of bad rap (often rightfully so), but Allo Darlin’s Europe, full of catchy, heartfelt indie pop gems, is an excellent example of the genre having more substance than many would have you believe. The jangly, infectious “Capricornia” is its best track.

Bat for Lashes – “Laura” (from The Haunted Man)My expectations for The Haunted Man were high after Natasha Khan released the gripping, emotional ballad “Laura” as an early single. I ultimately found the album itself a little dull, but I keep returning to this track, which finds intensity in a simple piano chord progression, muted horns, and an affecting melody.

Beach House – “Myth” (from Bloom)
Beach House’s Alex Scally hit the nail on the head in his interview with Pitchfork this year, when, addressing the criticism that their sound hasn’t changed enough between albums, he said, “A lot of people listening to music now don’t listen to the songs or lyrics at all. They just go, ‘Good tones…’ and that’s it. But we’re obsessed with songs. Sometimes, I feel like people aren’t listening to our songs, they’re just listening to the sound.” Beach House has cultivated a distinct sound characterized mainly by dreamy instrumentation and Victoria Legrand’s reverb-soaked voice, but that’s not the only reason to listen to them, and it’s hard to argue with a song like “Myth,” which is about how every relationship, with its complexities and heightened emotions, is a legend in its own right. It soars.

Carly Rae Jepsen – “Call Me Maybe” (from Kiss)
Here’s a song with a lot of haters, but I suspect they crank it in their car with the windows up. It may have all the substance of a frosting-topped cupcake, but it’s exactly what I want mainstream pop music to sound like – ridiculously catchy and fun. I mean, just listen to those strings. You cannot hate this song.

Cloud Nothings – “Cut You” (from Attack on Memory)Now with a more abrasive sound and pessimistic outlook, Cloud Nothings doesn’t sound much like the low-fi pop-punk band they were on their 2011 self-titled debut, but Attack on Memory is a great rock album in a year full of them, and its final track “Cut You” is exactly the kind of hooky, rough-edged, loud song I love.

Damien Jurado – “Working Titles” (from Maraqopa)
This marks the second consecutive time songwriter Damien Jurado has teamed up with producer Richard Swift, and now it seems like 2010’s Saint Bartlett was just a warm-up for Maraqopa, an album of excellent songs full of wide-open, lonely spaces. “Working Titles” blends Jurado’s usual terrific story-telling (favorite lyric: “I’ll show up in a title of your song / I only hope somebody requests it”) with a yearning, shuffling instrumentation reminiscent of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It on Home to Me.”

Dirty Projectors – “Impregnable Question” (from Swing Lo Magellan)Full disclosure: I don’t really know all that much about Dirty Projectors, and I never found the chance to listen to Swing Lo Magellan this year. But this song came up a lot on my 2012 playlist when I put it on shuffle, and I really enjoy the way it sounds like an old-school pop song with its doo-wop vocals, tried-and-true instrumentation, and syrupy sweet lyrics.

Dr. Dog – “How Long Must I Wait” (from Be the Void)Be the Void is one of the year’s most entertaining albums. Dr. Dog’s Toby Leaman and Scott McKinney know their way around a catchy melody, and the production is charmingly loose. If “How Long Must I Wait” doesn’t connect with some joyous inner part of you, then I’m not sure pop music is for you.

Fiona Apple – “Daredevil” (from The Idler Wheel…)The Idler Wheel… is a pleasure from start to finish, although maybe a bit exhausting for casual listening. One of the best traits of Apple’s songwriting is the way she makes her voice another rhythmic instrument, not just in her emphatic delivery but in the actual words themselves. In a song like “Daredevil,” every syllable seems painstakingly chosen for maximum impact: some lines are crammed full of words while others have only two or three. What makes it all the more impressive is how poetic and moving the lyrics are as a whole.

First Aid Kit – “Emmylou” (from The Lion’s Roar)
It’s hard not to get bummed about the state of indie-folk right now, with all of its bland, interchangeable bearded-dude bands seeming all but ubiquitous. To polish up folk music is to take away much of its impact, and I’d direct fans of Mumford and Sons to Swedish duo First Aid Kit (sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg), who are quietly churning out gorgeous songs with spine-tingling harmonies and plenty of room to breathe. “Emmylou” sounds as though it were written and recorded in a valley, the voices and acoustic guitar sounding so organic they may very well have always been reverberating through a mountain pass.

Frank Ocean – “Pink Matter (feat. Andre 3000)” (from Channel Orange)Channel Orange is an album that came dangerously close to falling prey to The Hype Machine for me, but I kept returning to this track, which goes from an already-great haunting ballad in its first half to downright amazing when Andre 3000 drops a verse in what may be his best guest appearance ever. It convinced me to give the album another shot, and, in short, I began hearing what I missed the first time.

Grizzly Bear – “Yet Again” (from Shields)
Grizzly Bear has always been an intriguing band in the way they’ve married the orchestral to indie rock, but that’s also made many of their songs seem curiously distant and, some of the time, not all that enjoyable. Shields is their best album yet because its songs are the most fully formed; listen to the way “Yet Again” blends its big, sweeping instrumentation with poignant lyrics and delicate vocal melodies.

Hospitality – “Friends of Friends” (from Hospitality)
At first glance, Hospitality might seem like yet another Belle & Sebastian clone (especially on album opener “Eighth Avenue”), but they’ve actually created quite a distinct sound for themselves, placing as much emphasis on bass and drums as guitar and vocals. “Friends of Friends” is poppy, rhythmic, and fun, as is most of the album.

Hot Chip – “Motion Sickness” (from In Our Heads)
I have a hard time with a lot of electronic music, much of the time for the reasons Beach House’s Alex Scally outlines above (“Good tones…”), but synths can be used to great effect when an actual song lies beneath all the spectacle, and Hot Chip has always specialized in making incredibly infectious dance music. “Motion Sickness” starts small before building itself into a joyous, booming thing of beauty.

Japandroids – “The House that Heaven Built” (from Celebration Rock) Celebration Rock is my favorite album of the year, not because it does anything particularly revolutionary, but because Brian King and David Prowse set out to make a great punk rock album full of anthemic songs with enormous singalong choruses, and that’s just what they did. What’s more, they beat the critics to the punch by already providing the best possible description of their music: “celebration rock” is exactly what it is.

Jens Lekman – “The World Moves On” (from I Know What Love Isn’t)
Jens Lekman’s other albums have never been all that cohesive, seeming more like collections of songs than anything else. I Know What Love Isn’t, a sort of concept album about a breakup, is the first to feel like a proper record; the trade-off is that it while it never reaches the heights of a song like Night Falls over Kortedala‘s “A Postcard to Nina,” it’s also much more consistent on the whole. “The World Moves On” is its centerpiece, utilizing Lekman’s trademark blend of humor and real pathos to describe life after a relationship.

The Men – “Open Your Heart” (from Open Your Heart)
It’s hard to pin The Men down; like Yo La Tengo, they jump from indie rock influence to influence, but unlike YLT, they don’t have a distinct base sound to filter those influences through. Still, something special is at work in their output, and this song, which sounds like Paul Westerberg covering the Buzzcocks, is as exhilarating a rock song as anything either of those artists did.

Parquet Courts – “Master of My Craft” (from Light Up Gold)
Here’s another band working itself through a laundry list of respectable indie-rock influences (Minutemen, Wire, Pavement, to name a few), but they have a much easier time defining their sound than The Men do. With frantic, twangy guitars paralleling pulsing, shifting drumbeats while frontman Andrew Savage (also of Fergus & Geronimo) spits out witty lyrics surrounding various New York characters, Parquet Courts have crafted one of the most instantly memorable albums of the year. If you like “Master of My Craft,” get the whole album; you’ll be glad you did.

Royal Headache – “Really in Love” (from Royal Headache)
Royal Headache is a lo-fi punk band that sounds like it’s fronted by a soul singer. Their album is a joy to listen to. Get it.

Sharon Van Etten – “Serpents” (from Tramp)
I’ve been following Sharon Van Etten since she released her sparse, beautiful debut Because I Was in Love in 2009. Since then, it has been a pleasure to observe how she’s expanded on and refined her sound with every new release. “Serpents” is essentially a full-blown rock song with its distorted guitars and pounding drums, spearheaded by Van Etten’s heartbreakingly gorgeous voice soaring above it all.

Tame Impala – “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” (from Lonerism) Lonerism is a synth-driven psych-rock album that sounds like it’s being dispatched from a rural landscape of some alien planet: it’s both familiar and new. Its songs sound great on their own and even better within the context of the album. “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards,” which moves from hook to hook through a lush soundscape, is pure pop pleasure.

Titus Andronicus – “Upon Viewing Oregon’s Landscape with the Flood of Detritus” (from Local Business)
“Upon Viewing…” moves swiftly through its 3-and-a-half-minute runtime, with Patrick Stickles breathlessly firing out lyric after lyric about the absurdity of modern life. Unfortunately Titus Andronicus wasn’t able to maintain this kind of momentum throughout the spotty Local Business, but there’s still plenty to recommend the album.

The Walkmen – “Dreamboat” (from Heaven)
Here’s another formerly loud and abrasive band that’s toned down their sound through the years, embracing the term “dad-rock” by actually having pictures of their wives and children in Heaven‘s liner notes. There’s still a core Walkmen sound, though, and Heaven is still a great album; for proof, listen to the lovely closer “Dreamboat,” which features frontman Hamilton Leithauser waxing nostalgic over a sleepy, hypnotic guitar and drum pattern.

According to Wikipedia, “The Christmas Song” has been recorded by, like, every popular artist ever. And I’m not saying every one of those covers is bad, but I have never wanted to hear anyone but Nat King Cole sing this song. I suspect most people feel the same way – I rarely hear any other version of it anywhere. Why? Well, Nat King Cole just nails it. He sings it simply and he sings it well, backed by that syrupy-sweet orchestra and those jazzy chords. The lyrics, written by Bob Wells and Mel Torme, are just vague enough in their details to give the whole thing a feeling of timelessness – tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow, will always find it hard to sleep on Christmas night. Really, the title itself says all you can say about “The Christmas Song” – it is what Christmas sounds like.

(I’ve been holding off on writing about my three all-time favorite Christmas entertainments, intending to cover them on December 23, 24, and 25. However, I’ve decided to save them for longer, more involved posts next year and enjoy the remaining holiday time with friends and family instead. Merry Christmas!)

TBS doesn’t show A Christmas Story on repeat all day on December 25 for nothing; it is the good-time, feel-great Christmas movie. What makes it so noteworthy is the way it blends specificity with generality. The characters are fully formed on their own, yet also resemble people in our own lives. Darren McGavin is Ralphie’s Old Man, but he’s also everyone’s Old Man – our fathers may not have won as major of an award as that leg lamp, but we all watched him obsess over something just as absurd. Ralphie is us as we remember ourselves – we may not have wanted a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas, but we all wanted something just as wonderful. Jean Shepherd, whose work In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash served as the basis for the film (he also narrates), specialized in this kind of nostalgic story-telling. A Christmas Story never missteps, always centering its focus on recognizable family dynamics and universal truths; it is the movie equivalent of a comforting childhood blanket.

Arthur Christmas, produced by the inestimable Aardman Studios (home of Wallace & Gromit), slipped through the cracks for many last year, despite (or perhaps because of) being paired with Justin Bieber’s “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” Christmas single. This is a real shame, since it’s probably the best family Christmas film of the past decade. An exceedingly clever script written by Peter Baynham and director Sarah Smith goes a long way towards answering the many mysterious Santa-related questions, both age-old (How does he get down chimneys?) and new (Why can’t we see his house on Google Earth?). It turns out the role of Santa Claus is handed down through generations, and although his current operation is remarkably efficient, Santa himself (Jim Broadbent) has become a mere figurehead while his tech-head elder son Steve (Hugh Laurie) pulls the strings. Baynham and Smith understand that cleverness itself means little without heart, and after the film is done world-building, it shifts its focus to its titular character (voiced by James McAvoy), the Claus son who won’t eventually become Santa Claus. Arthur may not understand the ins and outs of the family business, but he does understand Christmas itself, and the bulk of the film follows him on his race against time to get a cherished present to a girl named Gwen (the one child in the world who didn’t receive her gift) before the sun comes up. The film has fun with detail and flashiness, but its real success shows through its characters and their relationships as they argue over efficiency and progress, all while Arthur stays focused on little Gwen and her Christmas-morning happiness.

I wrote earlier that Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town is the best of the Rankin-Bass animated Christmas specials, and I stand by that assessment, even if it doesn’t have the cultural goodwill Rudolph has. What it does have is a more clever, entertaining story (narrated by a Fred Astaire-voiced mailman, no less!), and it doesn’t take itself half as seriously. Using letters from children asking for explanations to legends (“Why do they call you Kris Kringle?”) as a jumping off point, the special essentially mythologizes Santa Claus, giving him a backstory to rival the greatest of the Greek gods. The real fun of Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, however, stems from its playful tone. The villain, who some awesome writer dubbed Burgermeister Meisterburger, is magnificently ridiculous in his quest to outlaw all toys, and the most entertaining segments of the special lie in watching him and Kris try to outsmart each other. The Winter Warlock (obviously a significant influence on Adventure Time‘s Ice King) has an amusing arc, starting as the threshold guardian before becoming friendly supernatural aid. And, as always, there’s that special stop-motion animation, with its certain homespun charm.

(Apologies for missing the last two days–Christmas parties, work, and a new dog have all conspired against this blog. I’ll catch up.)

A simple story of a Macy’s department store Santa claiming to be the real thing, Miracle on 34th Street is a movie I’ve always loved, but taken on a new respect for in the past couple years. The reason is the following line: “Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to.” No, that is not a particularly profound or novel thought, especially for a Christmas movie. But what’s admirable about Miracle is how, when it comes to faith, it plays by its own rules, never giving us conclusive proof that it protagonist actually is Santa Claus. A movie like The Santa Clause will offer similar themes, but they never really function as they should because the film itself gives its viewers all the evidence they need of Santa’s existence. What is faith without doubt? In Miracle on 34th Street, we must struggle along with the characters. Is it possible this is just a kindly old delusional man? Yes. But maybe he’s Santa Claus, too. I believe in the Santa Claus of Miracle on 34th Street more than I believe in the Santa Clause of The Santa Clause. Why? Because the film respects its audience enough to allow them not to believe in him, too.